SOTU tweets focused on economy and education

Economy and education most talked about SOTU topics on social media

Twitter and Facebook see strong SOTU engagement

WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Obama’s statements on community college and the economy were the most talked about topics on social media during Tuesday’s State of the Union Address.

More than 5 million people on Facebook commented on the address; the top issues identified by Facebook users were the economy and jobs, community college, and taxes, according to data provided by Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone.

Both men and women ranked the categories in their top three, while women showed more of an interest in equal pay vs. the middle class, ranking the issue in their top five.

On Twitter, community college, equal pay, and climate change were the three most tweeted about topics during the course of the speech. There were more than 2.6 million tweets sent to the hashtag #SOTU.

Here’s Twitter’s breakdown of the number of tweets issue-by-issue throughout the speech:

The folks at Twitter also compared engagement on Twitter with each paragraph of Obama’s speech as it was read in real time. They looked at not just which topics were tweeted about but also where those tweets were coming from. Check it out the full visualization here.

And the most talked about moment at the State of the Union?

For users on both Twitter and Facebook, it was the same presidential one-liner: “I have no more campaigns to run. I know because I’ve won both of them.”

That comment was the most talked about on Twitter overall—more so than only topic discussed during the speech.